time to fall....is time to float....for a lotus blossom
~ Zuigen Inagaki

Friday, 20 March 2015

Bodhipaksa sent this out in a newsletter at the end of last year. Good timing for me to find!

Recently someone asked me what she should do if she couldn't trust a person she was being kind to. In the past she'd tried to be compassionate to a roommate she didn't trust, and had even felt herself to be in danger. She didn't say what the exact circumstances were, but it sounded scary.

Being kind to someone means treating them as a feeling human being who, like us, has a deep-rooted desire to be happy and an equally deep-rooted desire not to suffer. It means empathizing with the fact that happiness is elusive and that suffering is all too common. Bearing these thoughts in mind makes it harder to be unkind to the other person and easier for us to treat them with empathy, kindness, and compassion. It becomes easier to care for their wellbeing.

Trust means knowing or believing that someone can be relied upon. It might mean that they can be depended on to look after our best interests. It could mean that they can be relied upon to tell the truth. It might mean that they can be relied upon to do what they say they will.

I think generally we can in fact trust most people, even complete strangers, but when there's a history of dishonesty or manipulation, or when you pick up on a bad vibe, it's best to err on the safe side.

But kindness and trust don't necessarily overlap. We can treat everyone kindly, but a person may have a track record of not caring for our wellbeing (possibly even of being cruel or exploitative), or of being unreliable, or of being untruthful. Under such circumstances it might be very unwise to trust that person. They simply haven't earned our trust. They're not trust-worthy. Trusting everyone is what we call "idiot compassion."

But you can still be kind to a person who isn't worthy of your trust. Knowing that they're a feeling being, you don't have to want them to suffer. You may have to say or do things that make them unhappy (like saying "no" when they ask if they can borrow money) but you don't do that with the intention of making them suffer. In fact if we're being kind we may say "no" to another person because we want them to be happy! We don't make people genuinely happy by enabling their vices.

I'm not saying, incidentally, that it's easy not to have ill will for someone we distrust, just that's it's possible and that it's what we should aim to do.

It sounds to me that the woman who asked this question had got herself into an enabling or codependent situation. Not wanting to appear cruel, she didn't want to stand up to the other person. Wanting to be kind, she didn't want to say no. But she was confusing trust and kindness.

If we fear that the other person is trying to exploit or harm us, we need to be very careful. Some people want to rip us off or even physically harm us. Sometimes we need need to be kind to ourselves by getting the hell out of Dodge! We should be kind to everyone, but in some cases we should be kind from a safe distance.

Friday, 13 March 2015

The 2015 Edinburgh Medal is awarded to Mary Midgley, one of the most important moral philosophers working today. Over the past thirty years, her writings have informed debates concerning animal rights, the environment and evolutionary theory. Mary was a senior lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and wrote her first book, Beast and Man, when she was in her fifties. She has since published over fifteen books, including Animals and Why They Matter, Science and Salvation and Evolution as a Religion.

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

For any new Mum it is an overwhelming experience, this coupled with the sudden unexpected news you are also going to become a carer for a disabled child and life can seem like a fragile existence.

At 38 I had quite a settled life, after 6 years of trying for a baby I had pretty much all but given up, throwing myself in to my work as a therapist and writer. When I finally got my head out of the toilet bowl after weeks of morning sickness I discovered that my rather severe response to the pregnancy hormones was as a result of carrying twins. I remember the moment vividly, after a night in hospital hooked up to a drip due to dehydration and constant vomiting, I lay on a bed as the woman scanned my belly and there they were, two little blobs of life. I burst in to tears with a mixture of joy and fear.

Tuesday, 10 February 2015

Few are those whose contribution to humanity — be it art, or music, or literature, or some other enchantment — fills the heart with uncontainable gratitude for their very existence. Mary Oliver — one of the greatest poets of all time, and perhaps the greatest of our time — is one such blessing of a writer. She, the patron saint of paying compassionate attention, has made a supreme art of bearing witness to our world — be it in her exquisite poems, or in the prose of that moving remembrance of her soul mate, or in her meditations on the craft of poetry itself.

In her immensely rewarding recent On Being conversation with Krista Tippett — triply magical because Oliver rarely gives interviews, and never ones this dimensional and revealing — she read several of her most beloved poems. While “Wild Geese” remains a favorite, I was especially taken with a four-part poem titled “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac,” found in Oliver’s sublime 2014 collection Blue Horses: Poems (public library). It is partly a bow to her recent triumph over cancer, and partly a score to the larger tango of life and death which we all, wittingly or not, are summoned to dance daily.

Like so much of her work, it is an uncommonly direct yet beguiling love letter to vitality itself, poured from the soul of someone utterly besotted with this world which we too are invited to embrace.

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime.

Sunday, 08 February 2015

I receive an email from Tamuly Jung in France telling me that a neighbour of hers, David Brazier, is in Edinburgh for events organised by the Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace. This is an events-led Scottish charity organising programmes to promote the understanding of spirituality, and of interspirituality and intraspirituality, and its diversity. She tells me that he agrees to let me use excerpts from his latest book, Not Everything is Impermanent.

Dr David Brazier is the President of the International Zen Therapy Institute, Dharmavidya of the Amida Order of Pureland Buddhism, Zen master, psychotherapist and author of nine books. David resides a couple of villages distant from Tamuly who is living in a commune, The Oasis of Long Life. [See previous article, Many Roads, October]

He is staying at the Panda Villa guest house in Kilmaurs Road. Everybody in my Buddhist Thinkers’ Group has heard of David except me.

Thursday, 05 February 2015

Buddhism is a religion. It has beliefs, rituals, altars, offerings, bells, candles, metaphysics, clergy, devotees, prayers, meditation, visions, visitations, celestial beings, other worlds, other lives, moral law, and salvation. All these are found in Zen Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism, in Tibetan Buddhism, in Pureland Buddhism, in the other schools of Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhism, in fact, in all of Buddhism all over Asia. Buddhists probably burn more candles and incense than the Catholic Church. These are not degeneration or cultural accretions. The founder himself gave us robes, taught ritual and contrition, revealed other lives and worlds, and spoke with the gods. Secularised and rationalised variants of Buddhism exist, but it is these that are partial forms and cultural products of later derivation.

Sometimes it is said that Buddhism is scientific. This assertion would put Buddhism somehow within the frame of science, but Buddhism has much that would not fit into that frame. However, although we cannot really say that Buddhism is scientific, science is Buddhistic. Science is Buddhistic in that science is a way of knowing some things. Buddhism can accommodate everything that science perceives, but science can only perceive a fraction of what Buddhism encompasses, the fraction that appears within the frame that the restrictive rules of science impose. Distinct from science itself, there is also scientism, which is a modern philosophy. Scientism is not Buddhistic because it is the attempt to make the restrictive rules of science into the dogmas by which the whole of life should be governed. Scientism is a different religion and a rather narrow one and it would be a tragedy if Buddhism in the West were reduced to it.

We currently have a room free upstairs in our Pureland Buddhist temple Amida Mandala (:: photo) for a fourth resident.

We are looking for someone quite specific - someone who will be happy with our house rules (no meat, no alcohol), broadly sympathetic with our spiritual aims, and robust enough to deal with the building's use as a (sometimes busy) temple. We will suggest a month's trial (for both of us) for any potential residents.

The room is smallish and would suit a single person. It has a bath and toilet ensuite. We are charging £320 pcm including all bills and a weekly community meal on Friday nights. There are generous communal spaces - a shrine room, a dining room, a big kitchen, a living room and a library (and a beautiful garden). Our other residents Steve, Adam & James are all settled in now and enjoying living here, as are we. We also have three cats which roam the house!

If you or anyone you know might be interested in talking further (please do forward this email to your friends), do let us know - hello@amidamandala.com.

Monday, 02 February 2015

Since moving to this lovely house, I have inherited a beautiful garden - terraced, full of shrubs and flowers and soft fruit. And it has a pond. So far all I've had to do is feed the birds but soon the snows will go, the ground will warm up and nature will get itself into gear. Which I'll need to do, too, if I'm not to be overwhelmed. I'm glad to have discovered this post:

With illnesses like ME, fatigue and pain as well as brain fog and concentration lapses are common. So, it's important to make sure that when you garden, you are as comfortable as possible to help keep symptoms at bay. With trial and error, you should be able to find an approach that allows you to focus on your hobby - even if just for a few minutes - instead of worsening your symptoms.

Friday, 30 January 2015

The audience members wear a 'blindfold', a symbol of darkness and ignorance, during an initiation ceremony held by the Dalai Lama in New York in 2013. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty

The Dalai Lama sat backstage at a theatre in Rome last month, waiting to come on as the star attraction at the Summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners. He was flanked by two of Italy’s most senior politicians. There was time for a little small talk. Walter Veltroni, former mayor of Rome and candidate for prime minister, asked him how he coped with jet lag. Deploying his familiar syntax-free English, the Buddhist leader replied, “Travelling the world – time difference – no problem.” Then he moved on to more intimate matters. “But bowel movement does not obey my mind. But this morning – thanks to your blessings – after 7 o’clock – full evacuation. So now I am very comfortable.”

Bowel movements apart, this final fixture of 2014 had been clogged with problems. The Nobel summit is held in a different city every year, and, for months, preparations had been under way to stage it in Cape Town, marking the first death anniversary of the most feted of all the laureates, Nelson Mandela. The Dalai Lama, with his vast global popularity, would be the star turn – but, as the date approached, it emerged that the South African government of Jacob Zuma would not grant the Tibetan a visa.

Should the show go on without him? Supporters of the exiled lama said no: how could an event intended to celebrate the courage of the Nobel peace laureates fall into line with the cowardly action of a government being squeezed by China? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama’s old friend and himself a laureate, fumed, “I am ashamed to call this lickspittle bunch my government”.

A new political party in the Tibetan diaspora, the Tibetan National Congress, took up the cause. “They swamped laureates with mails demanding the event’s cancellation,” said Dave Steward, executive director of South Africa’s FW de Klerk Foundation. Nine laureates and 11 affiliated organisations announced they were pulling out, forcing South Africa to concede defeat. At the 11th hour, however, Rome offered to host it instead.